202 Mackenzie’s Voyages

very briefly suggested, as promising the most important
advantages to the trade of the united kingdoms.” 1

The fur-trader was not consciously an advocate of land
settlement, but he was, nevertheless, a pioneer of settle-
ment. Sir Alexander Mackenzie fought bitterly against the
Selkirk colonisation scheme, and yet he did more than any
other trader, or even Selkirk himself, to throw open the
north-west to settlement.

This transcontinental and trans-Pacific project was out-
lined to Simcoe in 1794, who in his report to the Lords of
Trade stated that Mackenzie had remarked on the necessity
of combined action to secure the Pacific trade, and on the
value of the Hudson Bay route. In January 1802, when in
London, he laid proposals on the subject before Lord
Hobart, the Colonial Secretary, suggesting the formation
of a supreme civil and military establishment at Nootka,
with a subordinate station on the Columbia River, and
another in Sea Otter Harbour in latitude 55° north. His
proposals were not acted on. In the retrospect it appears that
Mackenzie’s foresight was prophetic.

The North-West Company soon after initiated the
policy of developing the fur-trade west of the Rockies.
James Finlay was the first to follow Mackenzie over the
mountains in 1797, exploring the river that bears his name.
David ‘Thompson crossed the Rockies in the years 1801—2-3.
In the first year he was commissioned to lead a party over
to the Pacific slope to establish posts, but on reaching the
headwaters of the Kootenay he was forced by a large party
of Indians of the plains to retreat, as they feared that the Flat-
heads west of the Rockies would be supplied with arms and
ammunition.

In 1805 Simon Fraser reached McLeod’s Lake, and

1 Mackenzie’s Voyages, Conclusion.